Ben Hammersley's Book of Blog this week talks about comment spam in weblogs. He points to two Moveable Type plug-in solutions. James Seng's MT Captcha
The idea is pretty simple: Display an image with a Security Code and demand the user to enter a Security Code manually before allowing posting to go through.
Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist allows for the creation of spam blacklists and allows for the sharing of these blacklists.
Typepage Official Launch Today Sixapart announced the official launch of Typepad.
New features in the system include the ability to map your own domain name to your TypePad site so that your site would appear at example.com if you own that domain name, in addition to the example.typepad.com address that is included with your TypePad account. There's also more bandwidth for users at the Plus and Pro levels, giving users 3 and 5 gigs per month in data transfer, respectively. Plus, all levels now have the ability to password protect any weblog or photo album for privacy.
Also the folks behind Typepad and Movable Type were featured on CNN tonight. They have a video clip on their web site.
After the Cubs won tonight, I checked Sports Illustrated's site for the results of the Woman's World Cup game between USA and Germany. I found the link just fine. What bothered me was that the ads displayed along with the story were all about bimbos in bathing suits. Take a look at the screen grab... What the heck are they thinking???
Cubs Win... There is joy in Mudville... wow...
BloggerConSteve Burt is reporting from BloggerCon...
The BloggerCon 2003 Weblog: Dave Winer reports that BloggerCon might not have Wi-Fi access... I wish I could attend this conference. I know Pat Delaney, Will Richardson and Steve Burt will be there so I'm looking forward to updates from the conference and posts from "evening" sessions...
Chicago Uncommon is a great photography site that uses Movable Type as its engine.
Chicago Uncommon is the product of one woman's interests dramatically colliding. Passion for photography & web design crossed with an adoration of the Windy City developed into a massive collection of Chicagoland photography displayed categorically and shared with you.
Lots of great images of Chicago. Can be searched and viewed by category and date. Categories include neighborhoods, and she has some very nice images of Wrigley Field and the surrounding Wrigleyville neighborhood. Prints are available for purchase. Tonight I bought one she took of the Wrigley Field scoreboard.
On a technical note, she uses MTPaginate, a Movable Type plugin that makes it possible to break down a category/date page into several pages. For an example follow this link to her Wrigleyville category. I'm using MT for our Lewis Elementary Photo Gallery and this should come in very handy once I find some time to play with the layout.
Today Sarah Lohnes points to the CTELL project site.
an on-going research effort to develop and study the use of multimedia cases of best practice instruction for pre-service education in early literacy.
I am familiar with the project and have worked with one of the principal investigators, Don Leu. I was surprised though when I visited the site and discovered the pages could only be viewed with a Microsoft browser. (click the screen shot to see what was displayed)
I can't really understand why a project such as this would limit itself to being viewed only by a certain browser, and also only on devices that Microsoft supports. This not only locks out folks who don't run Microsoft browsers (Lynix, Safari, Mozilla...) but also folks who use Palm handhelds and cell phones. More and more I view web content not on a computer but on other devices. My Nokia 3650 does a pretty good job of displaying web content. Can't understand why they would do that...
Always wanted to receive one of those big checks you see the winner at a golf tournament receive. Well this past week at the Lewis Open House, the local representative from Washington Mutual ( a savings and loan) presented the school with a donation of $1000. Finally got my Tiger Woods moment...
Also have a principal page up on the Lewis site.. http://lewiselementary.org/principal.html
I still need to work a bit on the template, but plan to just fix things as I go. For the most part it will be school information and district information. Stuff that doesn't really fit on the school home page.
Lewis Elementary School Spent some time this weekend learning about MTOtherBlog, a Moveable Type plugin that allows for the placement of MT entries from one blog into another. I worked on the Lewis Elementary web site and now incorporate entries from the music teacher's site and a photoblog on the front page of the main Lewis web site.
Another 9/11, and the Nation Mourns Again
Soon, the ceremony began, and then the names. Eddie Canillas wiped away tears as his daughter, Kristen, 12, read aloud the name of her grandfather, Anthony Luparello, a maintenance worker on the 101st floor of the south tower. Mr. Canillas said that Kristen had practiced the names all week...
Tuttle SVC: September 10, 2003 Archives Tom Hoffman, in my opinion, the hardest working man in school technology business, has some interesting comments on CMS tools and Weblog tools for use by schools. Tom is an amazing teacher. I had the very good fortune last June to to visit the high school where he works and also an elementary school where he also provides support.
MT Gathering in New York Ben and Mena Trott will be in New York on Saturday for a gathering of Movable Type and TypePad users. Maybe Joe Luft can hop on the subway and then give us a report... Speaking of MT, I have set up the Lewis Elementary web site using Movable Type and also have moved the staff bulletin from a weekly email that was sent to staff, to a MT weblog. Now as important announcements, and district edicts, come in, they are added to the Staff Bulletin Weblog by myself or the school secretary. The staff is getting comfortable with checking the site several times a day. Several teachers have expressed interest in setting up classroom sites, so hope to have that in place by the beginning of next week.
So tonight, I'm watching C-SPAN. A tape broadcast of John Kerry announcing his candidacy for President. My son, Fernando walks in the room.I tell him this man wants to be President. I ask him if he thinks he would be a good president. He says “Yes...” I ask why, He says “ Old people are good... Right? ” Who can argue with that logic... Kerry in 04!
TypePad Education Weblog Portal: TypePad as Template Builder for MT Sites Al Delgado asked for more information about template exporting from TypePad to Movable Type. The Typepad help section explains this pretty well... Note: I believe access to the help area is limited to Typepad members... Also note that it is available to those that have purchased a TypePad Pro account.
Q: What are Advanced Template Sets?
A: Advanced Template Sets are templates that can be customized through direct editing of HTML, CSS and TypePad template tags. Advanced Template Sets are created when existing template sets built by the TypePad Template Builder are converted. Only TypePad Pro users have access to Advanced Template Sets.
There also an entry that gives step by step instructions for creating advanced template sets. Again, I believe access to TypePad help section entries is limited to TypePad members...
Educational Weblogs Al Delgado has been very busy working with TypePad and creating some great sites for folks interested in web publishing/weblogging tools and their use in education. His Edblogger Praxis site has quickly become a great community blog with a wide variety of authors posting there. I have been using TypePad and can see why Al is excited about it. It has a great tool set that can allow a teacher to easily create a site to share information about his or her classroom. It's visual and graphical tools make it very easy to design a site in a matter of minutes. While I am using TypePad's sibling product, Movable Type for the Lewis Elementary site and for an internal Lewis Staff Bulletin site, if I were new to this,( or did not work in a school where the principal knew how to install and configure Movable Type :-) )Typepad would be what I would use. For a teacher wishing to quickly create a site, I can't think of a better tool.
I have also found Typepad to be a very good compliment to Movable Type in that I can use its online template and style tools to easily and very quickly create (and preview!) template files. These template files are usable within Movable Type. I was having trouble with the design of the Lewis Staff Bulletin site, and discovered that I could create a template (a set of files that are used by Movable Type and also Typepad that define the look and feel of the site) in TypePad and export it to Movable Type. This is going to save me a lot of time.
Disruptive Technology Al Delgado points to Moodle, an open source course management system. My friend Bill Bratberg of Farmington, Missouri schools is planning on using this in his district this school year.
NPR : 'Now is the Time,' The March on Washington
Forty years ago today, 250,000 people gathered in the nation's capital to demand equal rights for African Americans. The March on Washington, with the sheer size of its crowd and the powerful words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was considered the historical tipping point in the struggle for civil rights.